Mainstream Weekly

Most recent articles

• Epaar Bangla, Opaar Bangla

  20 July 2019

  by Partha S Ghosh
  “What Bengal thinks today, India will think tomorrow.” This is how the first generation Indian nationalist, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, had certified the political wisdom of Bengalis a hundred years ago. Today the slogan is better turned on its head: What the rest of India thought yesterday, West Bengal (WB) is thinking today.
  Something that never happened is happening lately. The Hindu Right is fast occupying the centre-stage of WB politics. In the parliamentary election (…)

• What Ails our IITs?

  20 July 2019

  by Ashok Celly
  There must be something terribly wrong with our IITs. For after four or five years of seemingly intense engagement with a certain branch of engineering a fairly large number of IIT students simply turn their back on it and switch to management, finance etc. without the slightest pang of conscience and assume a brand new identity as financial wizards. Thus the ‘intense’ pursuit of a scientific career ends in a wizardry of sorts. A somewhat retrograde finale! Well, that seems (…)

• Open Letter to Political Parties

  20 July 2019

  After the results of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections were announced, political parties as well as several political commentators are trying to understand the social and political reasons leading to the 2019 verdict. These analyses have largely focussed on political and organisational limitations of the Opposition compared to the RSS/BJP. While we recognise the urgent need to address these political and organisational challenges, it is equally important to recognise the threat to Indian (…)

• A Naxalite of a Distinctive Strain

  20 July 2019

  TRIBUTE
  by Sankar Ray
  “If you set your foot in Gopiballabhpur, you won’t feel you are in Bengal. The Chhotanagpur plateau meets the catchment of Subarnarekha river here. The soil texture around is red and crumbled save a few villages. Both tillers and bullocks bleed their feet when they plough their soil for seed-bed preparation. Nobody speaks Bengali excepting outsiders who dwell here for livelihood like some school teachers and employees at community development blocks and forest (…)

• Whither Unreasoned Traditions?

  20 July 2019

  by Arup Maharatna
  As things stand by now, it would not be an exaggeration to say with hindsight that the entire post-independent India has been reeling increasingly under a stubborn, unquestioned, and endemic reverence for a sentiment-laden emotive notion called ‘traditions’ stuffed mainly by religious mythologies, dogmatic faiths, rituals, and loads of superstitions perceived popularly sacred and sacrosanct. Indeed, evidence is aplenty that an all-pervasive—albeit densely clouded—notion (…)

• More Needs to be Done to Revitalise the Chabahar Project

  20 July 2019

  by Gautam Sen
  The Government of India’s latest regular Budget of 2019-20, has a meagre allocation of Rs 45 crores for the development and opera-tionalising of the Chabahar Port infrastructure under the Ministry of External Affairs line of credit to finance this programme, as compared to Rs 150 crores last year. The issue is, whether this programmatic allocation is adequate, and whether it will be sufficient to promote India’s policy on obtaining land access to Central Asia through Iran and (…)

• CBI Onslaught on Eminent Lawyers

  20 July 2019, by Arup Kumar Sen

  Acting on a complaint from the Ministry of Home Affairs, the CBI conducted searches on July 11, 2019, at the residence of senior eminent lawyers, Indira Jaising and her husband Anand Grover, and in the Delhi and Mumbai offices of Lawyers Collective, a rights issue NGO run by them, for alleged violation of the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act and offences under sections of the Indian Penal Code and Prevention of Corruption Act. Jaising told reporters: “Mr Grover and I are being targeted (…)

• Save the Earth Now Campaign and its SED 20-30 Demand

  20 July 2019

  All aims of this campaign are sought to be realised within a framework of justice, peace and democracy at three levels.
  • Wider Aim To protect and save the life-nurturing, life-sustaining conditions of planet Earth (within the framework of justice, democracy and peace).
  • Specific Aims
  (i) Elimination of all nuclear weapons and all weapons of mass destruction.
  (ii) Restricting global warming to 1.5o C.
  (iii) Others aims considered crucial for the wider aim, to be specified from (…)

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  Overall Scenario turns from Bad to Worse

  13 July 2019, by SC

  EDITORIAL
  As the Karnataka drama continues and there are as yet no visible signs of it coming to an immediate end since the State Assembly Speaker has not indicated that even after 10 MLAs of the ruling coalition having met him today and resubmitted their resignation from the legislature he would accept those any time soon, the prospects of an early solution to the crisis appears to be remote at the moment. The possibilities of the Kumaraswamy Government resigning at this hour also appears (…)

• Union Budget 2019-20: Belying Expectations of Boosting Growth

  13 July 2019, by Arun Kumar

  The government was expected to present a big-bang Budget since it has a massive majority in Parliament. It was hoped that the Budget would help take the economy out of its current troubles. Soon after returning to power the government and the PM have repeatedly talked of the Indian GDP reaching $ 5 trillion in the next five years. This hinted at bold steps being taken. Of course in due time, the economy would become a $ 5 trillion economy but the issue is whether from the current level of $ (…)